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Weigh to go! Your guide to New Year diet plans

Weight loss. It’s been one of humanity’s major concerns forever, going all the way back to that day in the Garden of Eden when Eve approached Adam and asked, “Does this fig leaf make my butt look big?”

And it continues today. Especially today. Surveys always show that losing weight is one of the top New Year’s resolutions, right behind “quitting smoking,” and “stop sniffing magic markers.”

But what is a time-tested method for losing weight? Good question, because even as diet fads and trendy weight loss plans come and go, we all know that when it comes to weight loss, there is only one healthy, long-term, common-sense solution.

Liposuction.

Unfortunately, this procedure has many side effects. According to WebMd.com, these include: swelling, pain, numbness, scarring, bruising and limited mobility. But that shouldn’t be a big deal, because those are the same things you experience the morning after Country Jam.

Still, liposuction is costly. It turns out that paying strangers to anesthetize you while they suck fat cells out of your abdomen isn’t cheap, which is why instead of the actual surgery, I recommend you lose weight by Googling, “liposuction side effects.” Trust me, the photos you’ll accidentally run across will act as a great appetite suppressant.

So now that we’ve eliminated cosmetic surgery, what are some other ways to shed those extra 20, 30, 450 extra pounds? According to a recent survey of dieticians, the most beneficial thing you can do to possess a healthy body mass index is to build a time machine and go back and be born to skinny parents.

But some of you can’t do that, which means you’ll have to resort to good old-fashioned, proven weight-loss methods, by which I mean you simply have to eat less and exercise more.

Ha ha! Just kidding. That would involve hard work and self discipline, and let’s face it: Your idea of self-discipline is to eat only half a package of Chips Ahoy instead of the whole thing.

So let’s look at some diet plans. The best diets are the trendy ones like the Atkins Diet, where you can eat whatever crap you want while acting sanctimonious in front of your co-workers:

Co-worker: “Good morning, Julie. I brought in grapes and peaches for everyone.”

You: “Oh thanks, but I can’t eat that junk. I’m on a strict diet. Just bacon and fried sausage for me.”

Other fad diets are less glamorous. For awhile there was an actual dietary trend called the tapeworm diet — the theory being that internal worms would consume your fat. I’m not sure why this didn’t catch on. Sure, ingesting a tapeworm probably isn’t pleasant, but it still beats my mother-in-law’s meatloaf.

Plus, life is about choices: You can be overweight and unattractive, or you can be hot and have a foreign organism living in your small intestine. It’s your call.

Then there’s the Eskimo Diet. This was a fad that began after a researcher discovered that the Alaskan Inuit Eskimos’ diet of “caribou, raw fish and whale blubber” resulted in healthy waistlines. I don’t know about the dietary effects, but the story sure is inspirational. If you ever think your life stinks, just picture yourself living in a place where there is one hour of sunlight a day, where your night consists of a whale blubber dinner followed by a long night in a cramped igloo.

Fortunately, I’ve found a diet I can follow. Created by a Kansas man named Mark Haub, it’s called the Convenience Store Diet — so named because Haub was able to lose 27 pounds and reduce his cholesterol level by eating Twinkies instead of meals. It’s the kind of thing that drives health Nazis up the wall. So basically I love it.

Sort of like how I love the new Syrup Diet popularized by supermodel Naomi Campbell. It requires you to consume maple syrup and cayenne pepper, followed by an aerobic workout consisting of beating up your maid.

The point is that there are a variety of ways to lose weight, none of which you’ll follow this year. But I will. I’ve got my plan in place.